It’s back! And now it’s official!by Meredith Farkas

No, actually I was thrilled to have been contacted by Mary Ghikas, the Senior Associate Executive Director at ALA, about the possibility of ALA creating an official ALA New Orleans Wiki. After discussing it for a while, we decided that things could probably get done much faster if I set up the wiki on my server. I was more than happy to help make this a reality for the ALA. This is the ALA’s official wiki for the conference; I’m just helping to take care of it.

If you have any insights about attending ALA Annual conferences or if you know anything about New Orleans, please contribute to the wiki. The more people who add their 2 cents, the more complete a guide the wiki will be for all of us. Whether you are a wiki novice or a wiki expert your input is welcome. For wiki novices, the Wiki Editing Tips page should help you learn how to edit the wiki, but if you have any additional technical questions, add them to the FAQ and either I or someone else will answer your question.

The goal of the wiki is to develop a guide to the conference that reflects the knowledge of ALA’s diverse membership. This wiki will allow everyone, from the ALA Executive Director on down to a new student member, the opportunity to have a voice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon and an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University's SLIS program. She is the author of the book “Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online” (Information Today, 2007) and writes the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.

This is good for reflection: “we decided that things could probably get done much faster if I set up the wiki on my server” relative to a few other posts on this blog and the many replies. Even with Mary involved it is quicker to get someone to do it as a volunteer?!?!?

well, I think that’s the case in almost any organization, Lisa. If I do it, all it takes is me installing the software. If it’s on ALA’s servers there are committees that have to be consulted, Web people who have to be involved, people who need to get up to speed, software that needs to be evaluated, etc. (It’s the same at most academic and some public libraries too.) Even if all that wasn’t the case, the people at ALA have never created a wiki, and it’s not the most intuitive thing the first time around. For me, after all this time, it’s a cakewalk.

With tech stuff, it is almost always quicker for one knowledgable person to do things than to have a committee work on it. Committees are very valuable at times, but sometimes they just slow things down.

Sorry, I was more obscure in my comment than I intended. I certainly understand that one person can do things faster in many cases than a committee. But – lots of things about the ALA conferences (and other ALA things as well) don’t go through a committee – they are staff functions. My real point is that the fact that the ALA staff aren’t able to do this (don’t know how at this point and don’t have the tools?) is also part of the frustrations with ALA expressed in other postings/replies. I’m not unhappy to see ALA seek out a volunteer (Meredith) to get this to happen. Personally, I’ve used the “unofficial” wikis quite a bit for the last two conferences – and been quite happy to have them! I’m just reflecting on the fact that it was necessary to have a volunteer in order for it to happen. What I’ll be watching for is for ALA to highlight the wiki in its future conference marketing materials…

Although I am not from the US, I have been following with interest some of the blog discussions about the ALA and its relevance to 21st century librarians and information professionals. I think the wiki looks great and will be of great use to conference attendees. However, picking up on Lisa’s final point above, I could not find any mention or link from the main ALA conference page to Meredith’s wiki. I am sure this is something the ALA will rectify very soon.

Yes, they had asked me Friday afternoon if it was ready to be linked to and I told them it was. I guess then they have to get their Web folks on the case first, but yes, there will be a link from the conference Web site.